words, words, words

ferocious

jiri kylian

i wish my blogging skills were sufficient to put the proper accents over the r, the i and the a in jirí kylián. well, i got a few. the dance on camera series has been full of minor mayhem. the organizer talks too much, the sounds was way too loud, and a film was played out of order. but, on the other hand, jiri kylian’s film, car-men, was worth all that. i just searched for it on-line, to give you an image or some background, but there was so little i was shocked. i know that dance on film is not an incredibly popular genre, but i thought–something. it was excellent, car-men. truly a blend of narrative film-making and dance. the performers were interesting to look at and moved beautifully; the film techniques–mostly speeding up or slowing down the film to make movements comic, to look as if they were shot back when chaplain was making film–and an aside here to say that he was an obvious influence–were very well done; the quality of the film production was excellent and yet the whole thing retained a quality of experimentation that i experience while watching contemporary dance. it is a sense of effort or of adaptation in live performance that draws in an audience. film has motion (obviously) but not the same feeling of playing to an audience (generally) that a live performance–dance or theatre–does have.